Eating from the Hand That Bites You.

"JESUS LOVES YOU: EVERYONE ELSE THINKS YOU ARE AN ASS"

This was the bumper sticker in a car parked in front of the "Newman Center" of a major college I ran across today on the way to work.
The Protestant world stresses that there is a vertical and horizontal relational reflection of the Love of God and one without the other is dead works without Love. Faith without works is dead, works without Love is deader. Empty. Meaningless.
Some people have the relationship with God in the private time of their private prayer more or less on target while they never manifest it in the world in the form of good works or love of neighbor.

The good thing about "organized religion" is -it is organized. As a favorite pastor notes when passing the collection buckets "we can do a lot more together than any one of us can do separately alone." Combined funds generate more interest and can do more than the resources of anyone alone. Creative brainstorming works better in teams, alone it is called dreaming.
The bad thing about 'organized religion' is- it is organized. A zeitgeist Meme off the tracks drives the whole train off the tracks. Saint Thomas of Acquinas, a pre-medieval "saint" for example institutionalized in subtle and pernicious ways his wrong headed beliefs about the inherent genetic biological inferiority of women (he thought that you could abort them for a longer amount of time because they didn't become persons in uterus until months after male fetuses became persons for one example) -he believes them to be merely watered down weaker men- and he is credited with being the saintly father of all catholic theological education.
No Wonder.
Do you know any men who, for example, can keep a fetus alive for months feeding off nothing but what emanates from a body part? Just asking. What body part does a male use to feed a live infant for two years to keep it alive-containing ALL the nutrients necessary for development for two years?
Inferior?
The belief you perpetuate becomes the cage you lock yourself in.

Clearly, there have been some deeply "off the rails" thinking in high places- and it has perpetuated not only myths but deeply wrong headed ways of acting and behaving. It is taboo to even mention such instances where it comes to catholic authority - nearly everywhere it seems but the intellectually honest oasis called Jesuit Parishes.

This Sunday at 10:00 am in the Holy Trinity Theatre in Georgetown there is a famous Federal judge (Harvard Law) who will be addressing what the church is and should be doing to address the "scandal" which has caused a crisis of faith in some and a crisis of credibility for parts of the church. Go and ask him anything. http://www.holytrinitydc.org/

I am always stunned when I hear people in this country talk about "The Muslim World" as thought this were a monolithic one-voiced entity (dissent over Afghani and Iranian elections doesn't seem to dispel the notion, neither does secularization in Turkey and Egyptian election and openness to western education in places like Dubai where Georgetown has a campus)- while no one seems to call Europe or Latin America "the Catholic World" and Catholicism does have ONE titular head called a Pope (unlike "the Muslim World", and a doctrinal orthodological inquisitional enforcement arm called Dominicans who would be operating no differently than the Pakistani "blasphemy" law enforcers if we didn't have constitutional separation of church and state in this country and if Europe hadn't fought a hundred years or so of religious wars to get Freedom of Religion in parts of that continent.

When Authority goes off the Rails, the whole train follows. People will only sit at a dinner table for so long if the 'parents' can't stop verbally or physically abusing the kids- the kids would rather starve and will eventually go to the neighbor's house to eat.

The Jesuits are to be applauded for understanding that the authority structures in the church need better self-examination and self-reflection, because, frankly, the neighbor's house is looking nicer and nicer.